Mastaba of Ti, Interior; herders leading cattle, 2,500 BC
(http://www.tulane.edu/lester/images/Ancient.World/Egypt/A44.gif)
"the warrior king, riding the war horse, despising manual
labor, and reigning over a closed, casted society;
the artisan king, the blacksmith in particular, having no
reason to devalue manual labor and reigning over a hardworking,
merchant, noncasted society, open to development." (p. 169)
It was in the area of the Sahel, the same location of the Aquatic culture of the Late Stone Age, that societies were nearly evenly divided between pro- and anti-blacksmith stratification. Here too, a great development in native African agricultural grains took place. Although Egypt itself was a casted society, the people of Ta-Seti that invaded Egypt and established the dynastic period, according to the inscriptions of Edfu, were known as Mesniu "Blacksmiths." They were said to be led by Horus, who latter during the Kushite invasions that established the XXVth Dynasty was also glorified by the victors. Interestingly, the Kushite conquerors were very ardently devoted to reviving ancient Egyptian culture, which they considered one with their own.
Diop notes that the eventual state model of ancient Egypt best survived in "the neo-Sudanese zone and in the region of the Upper Nile:"
"1. Same type of royalty with the surviving names, titles,
and administrative functions.
2. Same state model.
3. Same social structure in castes.
4. Caste of griots in particular.
5. Same architecture.
6. Almost the same language, in the case of Wolof, a Senegalese
language related to the Serer, the Diola, and the Peul languages."
(p. 172-3)
The map is based on those found in Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, Chicago, 1991, pp. 170-1, and Pierre Clement, Revue de Geographie humaine et d'Ethnologie, no. 2, April-June 1948, p. 51.
"Where we expected to see an Egyptian, we are presented with an authentic Negro." (Karl Lepsius commenting on the depiction of different races (regional types?) on the tomb of Ramses III; Denkmaler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien vols. III & IV, Geneva: Editions de Belles-Lettres, 1972)
Pharaoh Tutankhamen and his queen (http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/arthist/ah50s/PostAmarna/tutchair2.gif )
Report any problems to Paul Kekai Manansala at
Sponsored by AsiaPacificUniverse.com